


Compromise

by leiascully



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Compromise, Domestic, Established Relationship, F/M, Loss of children
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-04
Updated: 2017-11-04
Packaged: 2019-01-29 06:00:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12624753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leiascully/pseuds/leiascully
Summary: The compromises they make to make things work.





	Compromise

**Author's Note:**

> Timeline: around S10  
> A/N: From a tumblr prompt.  
> Disclaimer: _The X-Files_ and all related characters are the property of Chris Carter, 1013 Productions, and Fox Studios. No profit is made from this work and no infringement is intended.

They talk around their history, all the times that she was right and he was wrong and vice versa. They agree on the salient details of their personal mythology and don’t dispute the other’s embroidery or bowdlerization of what happened. They know that the truth is more slippery, less sanitary than either of them could describe.

They claim to be united in their purpose, seeking the truth. She doesn’t say that she thinks that he’s tilting at windmills. He doesn’t say that he thinks that she’s willfully blind.

They negotiate the empty spaces in the house where William should be, where Emily might have been. They pretend not to hear the echos of slamming doors and sheepish apologies, of terse answers to parental questions and those precious, priceless unprompted declarations of love. They pretend they don’t touch the doorframe of the kitchen in the unremarkable house, each of them dreaming without saying of the way they might have marked William’s growth there. Scully doesn’t insist on a picket fence. Mulder doesn’t ask her to have a bag packed just in case. (She has one anyway; too many years of habit have conditioned her, but he clings as hard as she does to the idea that this place is their shelter now.)

He calls when he has a wild hare or a moment of inspiration. She doesn’t always try to talk him out of it. They make joint decisions about the expense of plane tickets, the worthiness of their unofficial investigations. 

They each choose their own pillows. Mulder chooses the thread count of their sheets; Scully chooses the pattern. 

Scully gives up her soy creamer for real milk. Mulder submits to having bee pollen in the fridge. 

They love each other, that enduring, unceasing, alchemical act of compromise and redemption, turning discord into golden moments.


End file.
